Giv­en his ever-grow­ing posthu­mous pop­u­lar­i­ty, fueled by mate­r­i­al new­ly dis­cov­ered, released, and re-released, we might call Arthur Rus­sell the 2Pac of exper­i­men­tal dis­co cel­lo.  Dur­ing his short life, he man­aged to col­lab­o­rate with the likes of Philip Glass, Nicky Siano, Wal­ter Gib­bons, and even David Byrne. A lit­tle-heard ver­sion of the Talk­ing Heads’ “Psy­cho Killer” fea­tur­ing Rus­sel­l’s cel­lo has recent­ly resur­faced (above), to the delight of both Heads fans intrigued to hear one more slant on a favorite song and lis­ten­ers new­ly intrigued by Rus­sell look­ing to hear how his sound inter­faced with the inno­v­a­tive pop music of his day.

In the clip just above, you can hear Byrne dis­cuss the col­lab­o­ra­tive devel­op­ment of “Psy­cho Killer” (albeit well before the record­ing of this B‑side with Rus­sell) at a Q&A ses­sion on his How Music Works book tour. Unbe­liev­ably, the song first emerged as a bal­lad. “I can see the song as being soft­er,” he says. “I’m mak­ing it aggres­sive-sound­ing and thought, ‘That’s like say­ing the same thing twice.’ Which the singer of the song says you should­n’t do. I thought it would be creepi­er, actu­al­ly scari­er, if you down­play it. But, you know, we had a rock band at the time; we got togeth­er, start­ed play­ing it, and that’s not how it came out. Audi­ences liked the big cho­rus every­one could sing along with.” I imag­ine they also would’ve liked the big string instru­ment Rus­sell would have brought up on stage, had he ever had the chance to join the Heads for a live per­for­mance.

via Twen­ty­Four­Bit

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

How David Byrne and Bri­an Eno Make Music Togeth­er: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

David Byrne Gives Us the Low­down on How Music Works (with Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Daniel Lev­itin)

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

A lit­tle while back, we gave you  The Sachal Stu­dios Orches­tra, based in Lahore, Pak­istan, play­ing an inno­v­a­tive cov­er of “Take Five,” the jazz stan­dard writ­ten by Paul Desmond and per­formed by The Dave Brubeck Quar­tet in 1959. While he was still alive, Brubeck called it the “most inter­est­ing” ver­sion of “Take Five” he had ever heard. Now, the Pak­istani Orches­tra is back with an inter­pre­ta­tion of “Every­body Hurts,” the melan­cholic song from the 1992 REM album Auto­mat­ic for the Peo­ple. It will appear on the forth­com­ing album Jazz and All That, sched­uled for release this sum­mer.

For more great moments in musi­cal fusion, don’t miss these per­for­mances:

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play Amaz­ing Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

If you’re an REM fan, catch these:

R.E.M.’s Final Encore (and an Ear­ly Con­cert from Ger­many)

R.E.M.’s “Los­ing My Reli­gion” Reworked from Minor to Major Scale

A long time ago, in a New York that seems a galaxy away, I found myself stum­bling out into Times Square in the rain-drenched, pre-dawn hours from a friend’s record­ing stu­dio, and stum­bling into a dis­card­ed Ampeg Jet J12, a vin­tage gui­tar amp pow­ered by tubes (or as the Brits say, valves). Some­one had aban­doned this beau­ti­ful rel­ic on the curb. I dragged the filthy thing into a cab home to Brook­lyn, cleaned it up as best I could, and went to sleep. The next day, I pow­ered it up (it worked!), plugged in my gui­tar, and entered the world of vin­tage tube amps. I would nev­er be the same again.

The gui­tar amplifier—perfected, some would say in the 1950s by Leo Fend­er—ini­tial­ly pro­vid­ed jazz gui­tarists a way to project over horn sec­tions in the big-band era. They even­tu­al­ly became instru­ments in their own right with the rise of Dick Dale’s surf rock sound and the advent of elec­tric blues and rock and roll. But, in the ’80s, vac­u­um tubes gave way to sol­id-state tran­sis­tors, then dig­i­tal, and tubes fell by the way­side. How­ev­er, since grunge and the garage rock revival, tube amp tones have once again become the stan­dard for most rock gui­tarists, even if they’re now often dig­i­tal copies.

But some die-hards nev­er gave up on tubes, and one of those, fea­tured above, is Black­ie Pagano, who has spent his days repair­ing and main­tain­ing vin­tage vac­u­um tube gui­tar amps and “all man­ner of audio mad­ness.” In the short doc above—part of a series of pro­files of New York­ers—Black­ie shows us Djan­go Reinhardt’s orig­i­nal amp and quotes Lux Inte­ri­or, singer of psy­chobil­ly punk band The Cramps, who once said that tube amps “turn music into fire and then back into music.” In just under three min­utes, the soli­tary, tat­tooed Pagano may con­vince you that vin­tage tube gui­tar amps are tru­ly mag­i­cal things, whether you find one on eBay, at Gui­tar Cen­ter, or on an NYC street­corner at four in the morn­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jazz ‘Hot’: The Rare 1938 Short Film With Jazz Leg­end Djan­go Rein­hardt

The Sto­ry of the Gui­tar: The Com­plete Three-Part Doc­u­men­tary

A Young Eric Clap­ton Demon­strates the Ele­ments of His Gui­tar Sound

Adri­an Belew Presents the Fine Art of Mak­ing Gui­tar Noise — Past, Present, and Future

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

It’s good to be Dave Grohl these days. One day you get to ser­e­nade Paul McCart­ney; the next, Sir Paul jams with you and the sur­viv­ing mem­bers of Nir­vana; and then it’s off to play with the Rolling Stones. The 50 & Count­ing Tour passed through Ana­heim last week, and Grohl shared the stage with Mick, Kei­th, Ron­nie and Char­lie, throw­ing him­self into a rous­ing ver­sion of “Bitch,” the clas­sic song record­ed back in 1971. By the 2:48 mark, as one YouTu­ber noticed, Kei­th Richards prac­ti­cal­ly stops play­ing and just stares in won­der.

Oth­er guest per­for­mances on the tour have includ­ed Tom Waits singing “Lit­tle Red Roost­er” in Oak­land (below); Bon­nie Raitt join­ing in on “Let it Bleed” in San Jose (I got to catch that live); John Foger­ty singing parts of “It’s All Over Now” also in San Jose; and then, in a nod to the younger crowd, we have per­for­mances by Katy Per­ry (“Beast of Bur­den”) and Gwen Ste­fani (“Wild Hors­es”). Old timers will enjoy watch­ing Mick Tay­lor join his for­mer band­mates for ver­sions of “Mid­night Ram­bler” and “Sat­is­fac­tion”.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Rolling Stones Live in Hyde Park, 1969: The Com­plete Film

Jean-Luc Godard Films The Rolling Stones Record­ing “Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il” (1968)

The Rolling Stones Sing Jin­gle for Rice Krispies Com­mer­cial (1964)